The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services has published its report on the life insurance industry The report includes a nice summary of previous inquiries reviews reforms and events since 2013 The Committee appears to think that all of these previous efforts have been ...

The Federal Government has announced that it proposes to strengthen ASICs powers and to increase the severity of penalties civil and criminal that can be imposed on individuals and corporations in line with the ASIC Enforcement Review Taskforces recommendations Partner Rachel Nicolson and Senior ...

A lot has happened since our most recent update The Royal Commission has published the submissions received from ASIC and industry participants on policy questions posed by Counsel Assisting at the end of the financial advice hearings And the small business lending hearings have been held ...

The Government has recently made changes to superannuation law that helps clear the way for trustees of regulated superannuation funds to charge fund assets in order to enter into a broad range of exchange-traded and Over-The-Counter derivative transactions The changes are intended to make it easier ...

There has been so much talk about blockchain and distributed ledger technology recently especially in financial services that you might be forgiven for thinking it might be more hype than substance But we think it could be very important technology ...

A recent decision of the English High Court may pave the way for the use of predictive coding in large scale discovery and regulatory investigations in Australia Partners Nick Rudge and Duncan Travis Managing Associate Kate Austin and Associate Emily Giblin look at the benefits and risks of the new ...

The Federal Government has proposed new legislation that introduces two new criminal offences for false accounting into the Commonwealth Criminal Code The proposed false accounting offences are designed to help Australia comply with the OECDs Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public ...

The release of the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has renewed the debate about the ability of foreign investors to sue governments under investor-State dispute settlement mechanisms which are commonly part of international trade agreements or investment treaties between States ...

The High Court of Australia has decided that a third party claimant can join an insolvent or potentially insolvent defendants insurer to proceedings to seek a declaration that the insurer is liable to indemnify the defendant Partner Andrew Maher and Lawyer Shelley Drenth discuss the decision and its ...

Has talk of a royal commission turned the ASIC Capability Review into an unlikely catalyst for an enhanced enforcement agenda With Labor pushing hard for a royal commission into the banking and financial services industry and an election looming the Government moved swiftly to announce broad reform ...